Focus Team Meetings and the $64,000 Question

What can you do you to coordinate people, processes, policies and marketplace to benefit everyone involved? One solution we recommend involves using focus team meetings among all the stakeholders. Create a brain-storming activity and ask the “$64,000 Question” as we recently did – we asked: “What are the barriers that you face related to getting the business within your unit?”

In our example, the individuals in the focus teams brainstormed individually, then collectively shared their ideas in small groups. We wanted to uncover the issues related to getting buy-in to the company’s cross-utilizaton of people, processes, policies and marketplace. As a result, they built a sense of community and gained insight with the outcomes:
— They created a cause and effect diagram
— They were able to see the “big picture”
— They made a thorough examination of their processes

The results revealed evidence of the lack of timely reporting and documentation, lack of communication between stakeholder entities, lack of follow-up and follow-through and a “sense of entitlement” by some of the associates. Other causes:
— Lack of training
— Lack of procedures
— Lack of data integrity